smartgit rebasing origin/local onto local / or in the opposite direction

Question

When I use pull and rebase local change or just fetch origin branch and then manually rebase local head via "rebase HEAD To" to origin/local branch... I can get merging conflicts, but it's ok.

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Only two things are disturbed me:

• first, the head after this not point to local branch, now he pointed to topmost commit of this branch, hence
• second rebasing process not starting (when it starts, we can see red color title "rebasing" after head name).

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Can somebody to shed some light on this.
Also, I tried to perform the same operation on computer of my friend and everything is ok!
I want to have clear log's too. But still I don't resolve this problem I have using merging branch.

Answer 1

When using SmartGit, or any Git GUI tool, the operations are essentially abstracted versions of the Git commands you would run in the terminal. Rebasing can be a complex operation, especially when there are conflicts involved.

Rebasing is the process of moving or combining a sequence of commits to a new base commit.
When you git rebase, you are changing the base of your branch from one commit to another, making it appear as if you would create your branch from a different commit.
See "Why is the meaning of “ours” and “theirs” reversed with git rebase"
Conflicts can occur during rebasing if the commits in the branch you are rebasing have changes in the same part of the code as the branch you are rebasing onto.

See SmartGit rebase

Now, regarding the issues you mentioned:

1. HEAD pointing to topmost commit: That is expected behavior. When you rebase, your HEAD will point to the latest commit in the sequence of rebased commits. That is because the rebase operation essentially replays your commits on top of the branch you are rebasing onto. It makes it appear as if you had branched from the newer commit.

2. Rebasing process not starting: The red "rebasing" title you mention is the indication that a rebase operation is currently in progress. If you do not see it, it can mean:

   • The rebase finished successfully.
   • The rebase encountered conflicts and is waiting for you to resolve them.
   • There was an issue with the rebase operation.

See also "Resolving conflicts in SmartGit - Finding conflicting files", or, for illustration, "Using SmartGit to follow the GitFlow branching and workflow model" by Alice Waddicor.